Shop Talk
Retailers, consumers and prices
Seasons 52 chef says fat does not equal flavor
Does food have to be full of fat, sugar and salt to taste good?
Clifford Pleau, executive chef for Darden Restaurants’ Season 52 chain, where every menu item is 475 calories or less, doesn’t think so.
“I haven’t touched butter in 10 years. You don’t need it,” said Pleau, uttering words that would make the late, great, butter-loving Julia Child roll over in her grave.
“I know there’s a slogan that says fat is flavor. Scientifically that’s not necessarily true.”
Pleau says fat is a flavor “transitioner”. For example, the fat in short ribs can enhance the flavors of a rich, bold wine by taking it to different parts of your mouth. On the other hand, he said, a mouthful of butter or olive oil would desensitize the palate.
There are no deep fat fryers in the kitchens at Seasons 52, which recently opened its first restaurant in Southern California and plans to have 20 around the country by this time next year. Fat isn’t ladled into cooking pans, as it is in many restaurants, it’s spritzed by spray bottle- wielding kitchen staff.
So how does Pleau make the kind of food that one restaurant consultant called “craveable” and “indulgent” without leaning on the industry’s unhealthy habit of layering on sugar, fat and salt?
Check Out Line: Never-ending bowl of sales?
Check out what Americans like to eat. Apparently, it may be an endless bowl of pasta.
Olive Garden owner Darden Restaurants posted a weaker-than-expected increase in same-store sales in the most recent quarter.
But the 1.1 percent increase was better than what the restaurant industry has shown overall and sales at Olive Gardens open at least 16 months rose 2.7 percent.
Chief Executive Clarence Otis said Olive Garden saw increased traffic in July and August.
“We believe that the concept’s current Never-Ending Pasta Bowl promotion is helping keep the brand’s top-line momentum solid, and we look for same-store sales to show modest sequential acceleration in fiscal Q2,” Janney Capital Markets analyst Mark Kalinowski said in a research note.
Mmmmm!!!! Endless pasta!!!! Now if only we could get the company Longhorn Steakhouse to offer endless filets, we’d be all set.
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Olive Garden owner goes Green
Darden Restaurants, owner of restaurant brands like the Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse, has joined the Sustainability Consortium — a group of scientists, academics and industry leaders working to “green” consumer products.
Darden, an 1,800-unit restaurant chain considered one of the industry’s best performers, has set a per-restaurant goal of reducing energy and water use by 15 percent by the year 2015. Long term, it aims to send zero waste to landfills.
Darden said it already has cut water use by about 700,000 gallons per year in each of its restaurants, installed energy-efficient lighting and has begun using “power up” schedules that help cut energy consumption.
“Our business relies on a number of natural resources, and these goals are designed to help us be the best stewards of those resources that we can be,” said Ian Olson, director of sustainability for Darden, which operates 1,800 eateries.
Other Sustainability Consortium members include Wal-Mart Stores, Safeway, Best Buy, PepsiCo, Tyson, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel and Waste Management.
The technology companies in the consortium said they were committed to creating what they say is a better way to identify the most environmentally friendly consumer electronics.
For its part, Wal-Mart is working on its own index that could be used as an industry standard. The retailer provided seed funding for the Sustainability Consortium.
Check Out Line: Have a helping of earnings
Check out the latest raft of earnings and outlooks kicking off the holiday-shortened week in the consumer world.
Kraft Foods, which makes Oreo cookies and Velveeta cheese, posted quarterly revenue that fell short of expectations, but said its recent acquisition of British chocolatier Cadbury would accelerate long-term growth.
Abercrombie & Fitch posted a lower profit as the retailer of casual yet trendy clothes for teens and college-age youth grappled with a prolonged U.S. sales slump.
Fossil, which sells watches, jewelry, leather goods, sunglasses and apparel, posted a better-than-expected profit and offered a full-year outlook above analysts’ expectations.
Darden Restaurants, owner of the Red Lobster and Olive Garden chains, raised its profit outlook for the year, citing improving consumer traffic.
“The signs of sales and traffic improvement we began to see late in the second quarter and discussed during our December conference call with investors continued into January and February,” Chief Executive Officer Clarence Otis said in a statement.
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